I’ve found the best way to incite violence is to hand out bogus flyers advertising 90% off high-end electronics.
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Coool!
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This is why I only shop where there are padded turnbuckles in the corners of the store.
safety first!
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What has this holiday come to? If the celebration of Christ’s birthday drives you to acts of violence then look to the Lord for guidance.
If he gives the “thumbs down” signal then go for the kill.
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“There’s always another bus”
Sales happen all the time. If you miss out today, wait a week, look around. It’s cheap somewhere.
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But yeah this is where I get a little bit Socialist.
This is what you will fight for? This is the place in your life where you will resort to violence?
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Capitalism at it’s ugliest. I did black friday once, stood in line for 4 hours to save $100 measly bucks on a new computer. I could have earned more money had I gone to work that day. Never again.
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The Hunger Games.
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So poor people beating each other up is entertainment? Got it.
You found it entertaining? I got more of a depressing spiral-of-late-stage-commodity-capitalism vibe.
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Why such either-or? You can have both for the price of one.
It’s like a mashup of The Running Man and Supermarket Sweep.
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The first rule of Black Friday is: you do not talk about Black Friday.
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Hoping for that elusive Punch Me Elmo?
Why not just sell this crap on discount all weekend? Is there a sales bonus for how much blood gets mopped off the floor?
“We’ve been here since Tuesday…night…at 9:30”
Ah, priorities.
You know where that needs to go, correct?
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It’s a way of pressuring shoppers to buy. If you know that you have a leisurely week or two weeks or a month to take advantage of a sale, it becomes less of a priority, and maybe you wind up spacing out on it altogether and not buying anything. Whether it’s at work or recreation or shopping, deadlines motivate.
The question of who values their time and effort so cheaply that they’re eager to wait on a freezing predawn line for hours to participate in a violent riot to save $100 on a TV is a separate, deeper issue.
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Yeah, you’re right. It was a bit elitist of me to criticize said shoppers priorities. Shopping on Black Friday might be a budgetary necessity. Which just makes the riot-inciting hard-sell tactics all the more despicable, IMO. Of course boycotting stores that have Black Friday sales would mean boycotting every brick-and-mortar store, and would pretty much epitomize futility since what everyone would see would be an idiot protesting discounts (though of course it’s the hard-sell I’m against).
R.E.I., for one, was closed. They put out a notice to the effect that “Our employees deserve to spend the holiday at home with their families instead of refereeing some fucking ruction.” I’m paraphrasing of course. And R.E.I.’s customer demographic inherently tilts a touch more towards the having-discretionary-income set, since poor people usually can’t afford to (and aren’t enculturated to) go mountain climbing and kayaking and suchlike. I wouldn’t be at all shocked to hear that the Apple Store and the Tesla showroom weren’t having Black Friday deals either.
You did incisively if unintentionally infer something I hadn’t really been thinking though; I was most definitely being elitist in criticizing the judgement of poor people subjecting themselves to abject abuse in the pursuit of deals on disposable garbage. I don’t think the culpability, for lack of a better word, falls on them so much as all the well-tuned efforts to take advantage of the desperate and uneducated, though again, I hadn’t really thought through my own classism in that regard. Thanks.
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As was I. But then I realized that, although I’m pretty frugal, I can afford to get nice but ultimately unnecessary gifts for my family and friends, so who am I to judge others for doing the same. And besides, I order things like socks and underwear on Cyber Monday because I can get it cheaper than any other time of year.
Good on R.E.I. It probably helps that being member and employ owned, having lots of big sales are sort of pointless. Apple of course isn’t likely to discount their stuff much if at all, and Tesla can barely keep up with demand as it is.
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In Seattle, there’s tent encampments along I5’s greenbelt. Some of those tents have REI branding that I’ve seen. It’s a little surreal.
I guess they’re taking advantage of the shelter offered by the tangle of overpasses underpasses and a huge freeway tunnel that goes straight under the densest part of the city.
Just offering up the tidbit.
It must be awful living within spitting distance of the freeway, with the constant noise, and the fumes, and getting chased off by city workers all the time, and all the danger of Seattle drivers whizzing by who knows how fast.
